


Race to Love

by taxicab12



Series: we change together [8]
Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, M/M, Realizations about love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25094653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taxicab12/pseuds/taxicab12
Summary: “So wait, wait,” Sophie finally said, laughing as she did. “Which one of your knew first?”“Knew?” Parker asked.“You know,” she looked between the three of them. “Like knew knew.”
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford
Series: we change together [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792609
Comments: 10
Kudos: 143





	Race to Love

**Author's Note:**

> Set directly after The Family Reunion Job (#3 in this series). You don’t need to read that first

The five of them ate dinner in the brewpub, laughing and talking, telling stories about the past year, the jobs and adventures and events.

“So wait, wait,” Sophie finally said, laughing as she did. “Which one of your knew first?”

“Knew?” Parker asked.

“You know,” she looked between the three of them. “Like  _ knew _ knew.”

“Oh.” Parker nodded. “Probably me.”

Parker had never been in love. She had loved, probably. She was fairly certain she loved Archie and she certainly loved money and thievery.

But she’d never been in love. Romance wasn’t a factor in her life, wasn’t something she thought about or understood.

Hardison was the one who first brought it to her mind. It was a slow process, something she didn’t realize was happening until she found herself sitting beside him at the bar in Boston, making a comment about pretzels. She wasn’t sure of anything until they left Boston and she knew that wherever she was going, she wanted him beside her.

She didn’t call it love then, though, not for a long time.

And Eliot, her feelings for him, came much later. Though they had been sneaking up on her for a while, she only identified those feelings after they retrieved the black book, after she heard the promise he made to Sophie.

Tension left her body, hearing those words. The thought that he would never leave them made her feel safe and not only that, but loved.

Sophie was the one who put words to it for Parker, but it was there in the brewpub, after Nate proposed, that Parker knew what she wanted.

She wanted them.

Eliot and Hardison both raised a brow.

“Not even close, babe.” Hardison laughed.

“Eliot?” Nate asked, watching a smile grow on his face.

“I’ve got you beat,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Way earlier.”

Eliot was, as in most things, a contradiction in love. He was a cook and a killer, a fighter and a lover.

He had been in love before and the pain of it sometimes felt like it would kill him.

But that had faded. The longer he was a good guy, the longer he felt like he had a purpose, so many of the things he hated about himself, about the mistakes he made, faded.

Hardison and Parker quickly became the most important people in his life. By the time they left San Lorenzo, he knew that they mattered to him, maybe even that he was attracted to them (especially to Parker, which let him attribute any weird feelings towards Hardison as light jealousy). But anything else was repressed and pushed away, to the point that he sometimes even convinced himself that he didn’t care.

He cared. He cared so much.

It was only on the mountain, trapped, terrified, just him and Parker alone in a cave, that he began to confront a truth. 

He would never tell her, would never ever say it aloud. 

She and Hardison were his closest friends, the most important people in his life, no matter what he felt he wouldn’t ruin that.

So he stayed silent. He acted as if nothing had changed. He scowled at Hardison and claimed that he never thought about the two of them. He lied.

And then came D.C. Every horrible thing he had done, the things he hadn’t thought about since San Lorenzo, the person he used to be all returned. He had once been a very bad man.

But they stayed. He offered to send them home, tried to make them leave, but they both stayed right by his side.

And when Hardison stepped on that bomb (and it was always Hardison, wasn’t it?), he realized two very important things: the three of them were an amazing team, better than he could’ve ever dreamed, and it wasn’t jealousy he had felt.

But still he said nothing, held it inside. Even then, he didn’t imagine they would love him back.

But they would.

Sophie was the one to catch Hardison’s small smile as Eliot sat back, triumphant. It was not the smile of someone happily in love, but that of someone about to win an argument.

Nate squeezed her hand, seeing the same thing she did.

“Hardison?” She said.

His grin grew and Eliot’s face fell.

Hardison fell hard and fast.

It wasn’t in his nature, wasn’t something he thought himself capable of, but that didn’t matter.

He loved both of them instantly. He was not, to be clear,  _ in _ love with both of them at the start. He loved them in a these-people-are-amazing-and-cool kind of way, a I’m-glad-we’re-friends-because-I’d-be-afraid-to-be-enemies kind of way. 

He’d thought Parker was gorgeous and cool (and totally unattainable) the moment he met her. And when Eliot had taken down four guards in the time it took to drop a duffel bag, well... (if Hardison hadn’t already known himself, he was fairly certain it would’ve been his bisexual awakening).

And while he wasn’t in love yet, he was the first to think of them, of all four of them, not just Parker and Eliot, as his family, as more than just the thieves he’d joined up with.

It was after the offices in LA exploded, after the five of them scattered to the wind, as he wondered where Parker could’ve gone, that he realized she wasn’t the only one he missed. The feelings he had for her, and it was love by now, were the same he felt for Eliot, the same rush.

Eliot was easier to find, so sometimes Hardison kept an eye on him, but he knew better than to reach out. 

He loved silently, only hoping that they would meet again. And one night in Boston, when they all sat at a bar that would become their home, Hardison knew he would do anything to keep them, however that was.

Besides, he had missed being the good guy.

Silence fell in the brewpub as Hardison finished speaking.

Parker smiled at him.

Sophie looked to Eliot, who scowled.

“Goddammit, Hardison,” he said, but his voice was soft, almost breakable.

“So, when did you two  _ know _ ?” Parker asked, mimicking Sophie’s tone.

Sophie’s face fell, turning to Nate. “That’s a very good question. When did you?”

“Er, why don’t you show them what we got in Vienna?”

“Nate?” She asked as he stood to get a drink. “Wait a minute!”

As she stood, following after him to needle an answer out of them, the other three stayed where they sat, laughing.

“It’s good to have them home,” Parker said.

“So, you gonna admit I won, Eliot?” Hardison asked.

“It’s-” he scowled. “It’s not a damn competition.”

Sophie’s audible scoff rang out from the far side of the restaurant. “How can you possibly confuse that?”

“Someone might want to tell them that,” Hardison muttered.

They laughed, and that was answer enough.


End file.
